5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer C tier for first-turn info

SPICA

SPICA is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 92.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SPICA Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A spike (kind of inflorescence in which sessile flowers are arranged on an unbranched elongated axis).

Noun

A spur.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How SPICA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SPICA as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 81.9% of games, misses completely in 18.1%, and leaves about 173 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,521 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

S___A S in the 1st position and A in the 5th position S__C_ S in the 1st position and C in the 4th position _P__A P in the 2nd position and A in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in SPICA.

First-turn measures

All four describe SPICA used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

4.79 Entropy (bits)
173 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 71% of evaluated openers
1.16 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SPICA performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#1,521 Rank among openers
Opening with SPICA left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,521 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
994
4 guesses
1,108
5 guesses
173
6 guesses
15
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
32%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

SPICA can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

429 answers
358 answers
169 answers
100 answers
99 answers
84 answers
81 answers
73 answers
72 answers
72 answers
58 answers
51 answers
47 answers
47 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for SPICA; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

S1P3I1C3A1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Try next

TONER TALER TILDE TRONE ROUTE LEANT

Strategy after playing SPICA

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SPICA.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SPICA:

18% chance
Suggested:
TONER
15% chance
Suggested:
TALER
7% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

18.1% →
TONER 6.00 bits
15.1% →
TALER 5.43 bits
7.1% →
TILDE 5.26 bits
4.2% →
TONER 5.02 bits
4.2% →
TRONE 5.06 bits
3.5% →
ROUTE 5.32 bits
3.4% →
LEANT 4.62 bits
3.1% →
TRONE 4.72 bits
3.0% →
LOURE 5.33 bits
3.0% →
POREY 5.02 bits

Research on SPICA

Game-tree analysis and word research for SPICA, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with SPICA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,385 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,219 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SPEEKUH. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SPICA sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).